tripu @tripu@qoto.org
Technologist, Spaniard, male, 42
Joined May 2020
tripu
boosted
@tripu I was only half-joking. But I suspect any way of deciding would be controversial and would generate polarising protests each time the current taboo trends change, which seems to be weekly nowadays. I think learning to accept (some) (harmless) traditions might be easier than forcing "improvement" without understanding what will happen.0
tripu
boosted
It’s a risk, yes.
Anyway, we’re talking shifting a few dates around to better accommodate modern sensibilities and preferences here, not burning down the regime.
Again (and I’m not trying to be facetious here): it is rationality (and I would argue also materialism) what you are using to conclude that any reform proposal risks devolving into a dystopia.
The polar opposite (keeping holidays just as they are) is essentially conservative and status quo bias.
Where’s the middle ground?
/cc @ImperfectIdea
Assuming we do want official national holidays, the calendar should be decided much in the same way other important, long-term decisions are made already: by technocrats, via international consensus, through Constitutional reforms, or via a referendum held once in every generation or so. That is how most decisions are made, actually — nothing new here.
Technocrats and politicians routinely decide what expensive medical interventions to subsidise and what conditions are too rare, unpopular or expensive to treat within the public health system. International treaties about commerce, war, energy, immigration, etc are written, signed and held for decades without the populace ever voting. Someone in your country decided exactly how many aircraft carriers to buy (or not buy) last year without consulting you. Experts advise governments (and politicians decide) about whether to phase out that nuclear plant, build a new dam, buy foreign debt, sell an island to a foreign nation, etc. All that is easily politicised and subject to controversy.
I’m not saying I’m OK with all those important decisions being made without my input. I’m just saying redesigning national holidays with a cost-benefit mindset shouldn’t be essentially different from all that.
I’d start by examining the convenience or the need for official #holidays and #festivities at the national level. I’m not saying I’m sure they’re pointless — I’m just saying it’s not obvious they’re good or necessary as they exist now.
Why stop a whole nation in specific dates? Why not leave that entirely at the discretion of other levels of government (eg regional, local, schools, companies, labour unions, even families and individuals)? There are advantages to not having everyone take time off, buy compulsively, halt important services, congest the roads, etc all at the same time.
The State/government staying out of the business of festivities and letting those groups design their own set of n yearly holidays instead would annul many Culture Wars (“shut up and pick your own, or negotiate your preferences with your employer/town/union”). It would better accommodate personal preferences and needs (caregivers, large families, childless couples, young, old, healthy, sick — they may prefer different weekdays or seasons, different religious dates, different historical figures to honour).
OTOH, shared festivities allow for better, bigger events (economies of scale), probably contribute to integrating immigrants and in general to build a sense of belonging and unity (aside: is that working? is that even good?), and allow institutions and businesses to plan ahead for safety etc.
Many arguments and counterarguments there, for sure.
Lots of (preferable) ways! Elections every four years are the rarest of ways in which governments at all levels make important, long-term decisions; I’m surprised that was your first thought.
Who talked about voting?
I understand that you (implicitly) saying that [our claim that festivities should/could be redesigned is bad] is something that you consider “good” and closer to the “truth” (otherwise you wouldn’t be defending it), and thus by your own assessment it risks devolving into a dystopia?
/cc @ImperfectIdea
😆
Well, I was talking in general there (cold utility calculations, cost/benefit analyses, redesigning traditions, etc).
But wrt fesitivies you forgot the most important point there: picking the best individuals/groups to honour! 😃
That’s me (or who I aspire to be) right there!
“I didn’t expect you to be interested. I’ll just be standing over here in the corner in case you decide you like truth and goodness.”
Too specific as a generic tool (and I was looking for web-based ones), but thank you!
It’s a wrapper around Graphviz, which I love :)
tripu
boosted
@tripu Asciiflow reminds me of good ol’ TheDraw back then. I had a lot of fun with that software in the old BBS times.
Note to self about #online #diagrams and #charts:
excalidraw.comfor sleek hand-drawn diagrams (just a few shapes, but great UI)app.diagrams.netfor blocky, corporate-looking diagrams (plenty of clipart, bloated UI)mermaid.livefor auto generation of diagrams belonging to a handful of types (computing, engineering, business), similar to #Graphviz (very limited, but declarative and text-based)asciiflow.comfor the lolz, basically
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamism :
“Many Islamist movements, such as the Muslim Brotherhood, have been willing to pursue their ends by peaceful political processes, rather than revolutionary means. Others, notably Qutb, called for violence, and his followers are generally considered Islamic extremists.”
That’s the approach I advocate.
Let’s condemn explicitly violent groups of any sort, be it incels, Muslims, Christians, conservatives, environmentalists, anarchists, whatever — without treating each and every individual who self-identifies with the label as a terrorist.
Another way to see how that logic is dangerous:
31% of British Muslims believe that apostates should be killed. Yet in the UK they do not label “terrorists” all Muslims.
In Egypt, that percentage more than doubles (64% favour killing apostates). And three quarters of Palestinians defend the stoning of women as punishment for adultery. That does not make Egyptians or Palestinians “terrorists” as a whole, of course.
Those figures above seem more alarming (and reliable) than any report I’ve seen about “incel” “communities” so far.
This is the exact link between those cases and every other “incel” in the world. In that article:
“[He] declared himself a so-called ‘incel’”
An on the WP article:
“[People] have self-identified as involuntarily celibate, or whose statements align with incel ideologies”
ie, we would declare terrorists thousands, or hundreds of thousands, of people who never hurt anybody just because a handful of them self-identified as belonging to the same loosely-defined group.
After a load of stats and surveys from different sources, starting in the 70s and spanning half a century:
“Men are more committed than women to the pursuit of #truth as the raison d’être of #science, while women are more committed to various moral goals, such as equity, inclusion, and the protection of vulnerable groups. […] #Men are relatively more interested in advancing what is empirically correct, and #women are relatively more interested in advancing what is morally desirable.”
Technologist, Spaniard, male, 42
Joined May 2020
